Cyber Terrorists Threaten New Wave of Attacks Against US Banks

Islamic terrorists threaten to launch new round of cyber attacks against US banking websites.

By Rachel Hirshfeld

First Publish: 12/11/2012, 9:49 PM

computers (illustrative)

Reuters

A group claiming to be aligned with the Islamic terrorist group that launched a massive attack against U.S. bank websites in the fall has threatened another round of attacks, set to start this week, Fox News reported.

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters posted a message on a popular message board late Monday, saying it will target the websites of J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services and SunTrust Banks.

A SunTrust spokesman declined to comment on the matter. None of the other banks could immediately be reached for comment.

"In new phase, the wideness and the number of attacks will increase explicitly; and offenders and subsequently their governmental supporters will not be able to imagine and forecast the widespread and greatness of these attacks," the posting said, according to Fox.

In September and October, al-Qassam launched widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against numerous banking websites. The attacks function by slamming Web servers will a flood of requests, with the goal of rendering them completely inaccessible or slowing access to such an extent that they are virtually unattainable.

Security experts and the bank officials said at the time that customer data was not at risk.

While the perpetrators behind the al-Qassam attacks have yet to be identified, the name is a reference to the “armed” wing of Hamas, although the entire group employs militaristic means and terrorist attacks.